GrowthBusters Earth Day 2011 Soundtrack Includes Pete Seeger

I want to honor musicians who’ve devoted their artistry to finding the cure for growth addiction and those who have offered to help the GrowthBusters documentary film project. To do that we decided to publish a “soundtrack” album for Earth Day, featuring music inspiring or inspired by our film. Some, but not all, of this music will undoubtedly find its way into the film.

One tune that undoubtedly will be in the film is the new GrowthBusters Theme. Order this album and you’ll be among the very first to hear it in its entirety. I woke up this morning with it bouncing around in my head!

Proceeds from the sale of this album will help fund completion of the film. Every artist represented has graciously contributed his/her work to this fundraiser.

In order to pull this off, we have to limit the number of copies and the length of time this is available, so please order yours now. You’ll notice that the GrowthBusters Store is now open for business. Aside from this album (CD or digital download) you’ll also find (and this is new) t-shirts and bumper stickers. Purchasing these items helps support the film, and displaying them proudly helps raise awareness of limits to growth and the foolishness of our culture’s worship of growth everlasting.

Pete Seeger (Bacon, New York, U.S.) is of course a world-famous folk singer and songwriter. He is best known as the author or co-author of Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, If I Had a Hammer, and Turn, Turn, Turn! He hit the radio airwaves in the 1940s and was quite prolific in the 1960s with music supporting peace, civil rights and environmental causes. Pete is an icon, and we are honored he chose to participate and help promote our project. He is about to celebrate his 92nd birthday. Happy Birthday, Pete!

A very special thanks to Pete for allowing us to include his song, We’ll All Be A-Doubling, on this album. This is a live recording from 1998, which has never been published. I particularly like it because of his included commentary.

Jake Fader (Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.) composed and recorded the GrowthBusters Theme and All the Little Birdies specifically for the GrowthBusters documentary. Jake and I were introduced by a gentleman who was intrigued when he heard me speak about GrowthBusters at a conference last year. Our hope is to have Jake write more original music for the film. Jake believes GrowthBusters is an important wake up call for our society.

It was Jake’s idea for our theme song to have a reggae flavor, and I’m thrilled at the outcome. He corralled Carlos Jones for the vocals. It was a stroke of brilliance. Jake is head engineer at Elevation Recording Studio, and has a very cool and popular band called Mifune. He spends his days finding new ways to get sound waves to do what he wants. We love how he does it!

Nina Centaine (Ocean Shores, New South Wales, Australia) is a wonderfully passionate, zany friend of the GrowthBusters project. She had been humbly volunteering her time on the film for some time before we discovered she is an accomplished musician. She has turned up some amazing footage we hope to include in the film. Horizon Fall is from her album, Silver Shadows, available on iTunes.

Her newest composition, More, is so new that this recording was made on her iPhone! Nina wrote, “This song wouldn’t leave me alone until it was finished! There was no conscious thought. It was subliminal and just flowed…. LOVE IT! when that happens. In hindsight I guess it’s a manifestation of working with Dave and the GrowthBusters team and a summary of my own personal feelings and beliefs. It IS time for change! And all that needs to change is habits and attitudes. Nothing to it!!! Thanks for supporting Dave and the team! Change is around the bend and we are the lucky ones to drive that vehicle. Bring it on!”

The Chairman (Adelaide, South Australia) is an electronic artist whose song, Zero, began as an ambitious project to turn Professor Al Bartlett’s lecture, Arithmetic, Population, and Energy into a badass dance track, the better to educate today’s swinging generation about the perils of unrestrained growth. When not composing world-changing music, The Chairman wrestles bears and studies Political Science. The GrowthBusters film is dedicated to Al Bartlett, who continues, at the age of 88, to crusade for sanity about limits to growth.”

Dawnya Clarine (Sandpoint, Idaho, U.S.) Combining her passion for music with her love for the environment, Dawnya wrote and produced Our Mother in less than a month. The song paints a picture of Mother Earth with nurturing, human qualities, and reminds us our Mother needs our caring attention. The song is inspiring in its beauty, simplicity and positive message. Clarine’s vocals are angelic and hypnotic. Since its 2010 debut, Dawnya has dedicated all proceeds from sale of this song to benefit “eco-awesome” organizations. GrowthBusters is proud to be included.

Jeanie Fitchen (Cocoa, Florida, U.S.) s an environmental singer/songwriter who devotes much of her time to performing and spreading her messages of hope and care for the environment in schools and on concert and festival stages. She is the 2010 recipient of the Fellow Man & Mother Earth Award from the Stetson Kennedy Foundation and 2001 recipient of the Florida Folk Heritage Award from the State of Florida.

The song Changes in the Wind from her grammy-nominated album Roads deals with overpopulation awareness and places the challenge of curbing excessive growth into the hands of the people.–every man, woman, and child. The song That Once There Were is an upbeat lament for the loss of habitat and endangered creatures due to urban sprawl and irresponsible development, thus summing up her philosophy: It grieves me so that you may never know the treasures that once there were.

DackDyde (London, England) Prophets Of Doom is a tongue in cheek rhythmic rant about post 9/11 London. Words and vocals DackDyde, music and production by Murray Gordon. DackDyde is a singer/songwriter with a ”positively acerbic” slant on life, love, politics, religion and environment (what’s left of it). He writes very passionate, humerous, melodies about the state of relationships between people and nations both as a ”lonesome solo sonic hobo” and with his ”progrock psycho rant ” band…OUTERBLUE.

Black Piranha (New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.) Cameron Woods, drummer for Black Piranha, was thrilled to share this song with us. Cameron has played for several national and international recording acts including Tyrone Davis, The Dells And The Staple Singers. Cameron formed Black Piranha in 1991. He has also performed with several New Orleans acts including Big Al Carson and Bamboula 2000.

We thought we’d include a couple of bonus tracks especially for youngsters. It’s their future at stake and we need to step inbetween them and the pro-growth cultural programming as early as possible:

Clifton and Bettye Ware (Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.) Lots of Stuff is from Eco Songs (2010), a collection of 12 serious and satirical environmental songs by Clifton and Bettye Ware. This song spoofs the economic concept of material growth and prosperity as the path to happiness and satisfaction in life. All Eco Songs may be heard on Clif’s website.

The Offhand Band (Red Hook, New York, U.S.) is Mark S. Meritt. His artistic and academic pursuits have long been inspired by an ecological understanding of what can work well, and sustainably, for people. The Offhand Band’s debut album, Everyone’s Invited, has songs for kids and families that entertain as they reflect aspects of this understanding. With its guitars, Country/Western flavor, and minimalist simplicity, Aggie and Timmy, from that album, is a departure from Mark’s mostly rock-pop-show-tune-based, and usually far wordier, songwriting, but Mark felt such a break from the ordinary seems altogether appropriate as a contribution to this soundtrack fundraiser for our film. Song legalese: Written by and (P)&(c) 2008 Mark S. Meritt (BMI). All rights reserved.